Hit the reset button. The presidential campaign in Iowa just started anew.

Rick Perry burst into Iowa today with enough energy behind him to power the Astrodome. Or, in more measurable terms, with enough media interest to test the electrical capacity of the Electric Park Ballroom in Waterloo.

Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann made sure he didn’t have that spotlight to himself.

“I heard there were going to be a lot of cameras here, so I decided to come back,” Santorum joked. He spoke before Perry at the Black Hawk County Republican Lincoln dinner.

In some ways, Perry is starting ahead of some of the established campaigns. Day One, and he already has a campaign bus decorated with the slogan, “Get America Working.” One GOP insider remarked that Perry probably spent more on his bus than Santorum spent on the straw poll. But campaign aides acknowledged that he has to work fast to compete with campaigns that have already been working the state for months.

The event itself had fewer Republicans but more media than Waterloo native Michele Bachmann brought to the ballroom in late June, the night before formally launching her campaign. There were about 300 in the room tonight; about 550 for Bachmann’s debut. Bachmann, fresh off Saturday’s straw poll victory, gave away an apple pie to a 100-year-old woman in the crowd but didn’t offer even a greeting to Perry from the stage.

Perry campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan, the governor’s former chief of staff, said expect Perry to center his message on job creation and fiscal discipline. “He’s proud of his record and his faith and his philosophy and he’s happy to talk about it. But we believe the primary need in the country, and the primary message to defeat Barack Obama is job creation and fiscal discipline,” Sullivan said.

Indeed, Perry punched the jobs rhetoric. “We need to be focused on jobs in the country. We need to be focused on getting America working again. I have a track record of doing that,” he said.

The only two other candidates speaking Sunday in Waterloo, Santorum and Bachmann, pressed points about values.

“Without social conservatives, it will be very difficult to beat Barack Obama in 2012,” Bachmann said.

Santorum said he has “a difference with some in this race, saying states can do whatever they want to do” on marriage. Perry, taking the stage after Santorum, said directly that he disagrees with the former Pennsylvania senator on that issue. “I believe in the 10th amendment,” he said.

Perry may bring a renewed focus in the race on pocketbook issues, but it appears he’ll also restart the argument over whether dollars or values should have top billing in the race.

Perry also emphasized the time he spent in the Air Force, a contrast with most of the rest of the field. He said he wants to make sure every member of the military respects the president. He and Ron Paul are the only candidates in the top tier of the race with military experience. Bachmann, as she has in the past, touted her work on the Joint Committee on Intelligence and emphasized that her father and stepfather were military veterans.

Perry will force the other campaigns to stretch different muscles than they have been up to now. Bachmann emphasized that she’ll be back in Iowa often, talking to “more and more Iowans.” But next time, she may need to bring more than one apple pie.